1 Notmuch 0.9 (2011-10-01)
2 ========================
7 Correct handling of interruptions during "notmuch new"
9 "notmuch new" now operates as a series of small, self-consistent
10 transactions, so it can correctly resume after an interruption or
11 crash. Previously, interruption could lose existing tags, fail to
12 detect messages on resume, or leave the database in a state
13 temporarily or permanently inconsistent with the mail store.
20 notmuch_database_begin_atomic and notmuch_database_end_atomic allow
21 multiple database operations to be performed atomically.
23 notmuch_database_find_message_by_filename does exactly what it says.
28 Wrap new library functions notmuch_database_{begin,end}_atomic,
29 and add new exception Notmuch::UnbalancedAtomicError. Rename destroy
30 to destroy! according to Ruby naming conventions.
33 Notmuch 0.8 (2011-09-10)
34 ========================
36 Improved handling of message/rfc822 parts
38 Both in the CLI and the emacs interface. Output of rfc822 parts now
39 includes the primary headers, as well as the body and all subparts.
40 Output of the completely raw rfc822-formatted message, including all
41 headers, is unfortunately not yet supported (but hopefully will be
44 Improved Build system portability
46 Certain parts of the shell script generating notmuch.sym were
47 specific to the GNU versions of sed and nm. The new version should
48 be more portable to e.g. OpenBSD.
50 Documentation update for Ruby bindings
52 Added documentation, typo fixes, and improved support for rdoc.
54 Unicode, iterator, PEP8 changes for python bindings
56 - PEP8 (code formatting) changes for python files.
57 - Remove Tags.__len__ ; see 0.6 release notes for motivation.
58 - Decode headers as UTF8, encode (unicode) database paths as UTF8.
60 Notmuch 0.7 (2011-08-01)
61 ========================
63 Vim interface improvements
64 --------------------------
66 Jason Woofenden provided a number of bug fixes for the Vim interface
68 * fix citation/signature fold lengths
69 * fix cig/cit parsing within multipart/*
70 * fix on-screen instructions for show-signature
71 * fix from list reformatting in search view
72 * fix space key: now archives (did opposite)
74 Uwe Kleine-König contributed
76 * use full path for sendmail/doc fix
77 * fix compose temp file name
79 Python Bindings changes
80 -----------------------
82 Sebastian Spaeth contributed two changes related to unicode and UTF8:
84 * message tags are now explicitly unicode
85 * query string is encoded as a UTF8 byte string
87 Build-System improvments
88 ------------------------
90 Generate notmuch.sym after the relevant object files
92 This fixes a bug in parallel building. Thanks to Thomas Jost for the
95 Notmuch 0.6.1 (2011-07-17)
96 ==========================
101 Re-export Xapian exception typeinfo symbols.
103 It turned out our aggressive symbol hiding caused problems for
104 people running gcc 4.4.5.
106 Notmuch 0.6 (2011-07-01)
107 =======================
108 New, general features
109 ---------------------
110 Folder-based searching
112 Notmuch queries can now include a search term to match the
113 directories in which mail files are stored (within the mail
114 storage). The syntax is as follows:
118 For example, one might use things such as:
124 to match any path containing a directory "spam", "work/todo", or
125 containing a directory starting with "2011-", respectively.
127 This feature is particularly useful for users of delivery-agent
128 software (such as procmail or maildrop) that is filtering mail and
129 delivering it to particular folders, or users of systems such as
130 Gmail that use filesystem directories to indicate message tags.
132 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
133 notmuch will be searchable with folder: terms. In order to enable
134 this feature for all mail, the entire notmuch index will need to be
137 notmuch dump > notmuch.dump
138 # Backup, then remove notmuch database ($MAIL/.notmuch)
140 notmuch restore notmuch.dump
144 Both the command line interface and the emacs-interface have new
145 support for PGP/MIME, detailed below. Thanks to Daniel Kahn Gillmor
146 and Jameson Graef Rollins for making this happen.
148 New, automatic tags: "signed" and "encrypted"
150 These tags will automatically be applied to messages containing
151 multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted parts.
153 NOTE: Only messages that are newly indexed with this version of
154 notmuch will receive these tags.
156 New command-line features
157 -------------------------
158 Add new "notmuch show --verify" option for signature verification
160 This option instruct notmuch to verify the signature of
161 PGP/MIME-signed parts.
163 Add new "notmuch show --decrypt" and "notmuch reply --decrypt" options
165 This option instructs notmuch to decrypt PGP/MIME-encrypted parts.
166 Note that this feature currently requires gpg-agent and a passphrase entry
167 tool (e.g. pinentry-gtk or pinentry-curses).
169 Proper nesting of multipart parts in "notmuch show" output
171 MIME parts are now display with proper nesting to reflect original
172 MIME hierarchy of a message. This allows clients to correctly
173 analyze the MIME structure, (such as, for example, determining to
174 which parts a signature part applies).
176 Add new "notmuch show --part" option
178 This is a replacement for the older "notmuch part" command, (which
179 is now deprecated—it should still work as always, but is no longer
180 documented). Putting part output under "notmuch show" allows for all
181 of the "notmuch show" options to be applied when extracting a single
182 part, (such as --format=json for extracting a message part with JSON
185 Deprecate "notmuch search-tags", (in favor of "notmuch search --output=tags *")
187 The "notmuch search-tags" sub-command has been redundant since the
188 addition of the --output=tags option to "notmuch search". We now
189 make that more clear by deprecating "notmuch search-tags", (dropping
190 it from the documentation). We do continue to support the old syntax
191 by translating it internally to the new call.
193 Performance improvements
194 ------------------------
195 Faster searches (by doing fewer searches to construct threads)
197 Whenever a user asks for search results as threads, notmuch first
198 performs a search for messages matching the query, then performs
199 additional searches to find other messages in the resulting threads.
201 Removing inefficiencies and redundancies in these secondary searches
202 results in a measured speedups of 1.5x for a typical search.
204 Faster searches (by doing fewer passes to gather message data)
206 Optimizing Xapian data access patterns (using a single pass to get
207 all message-document data rather than a pass for each data type)
208 results in a measured speedup of 1.7x for a typical search.
210 The benefits of this optimization combine with the preceding
211 optimization. With both in place, Austin Clements measured a speedup
212 of 2.5x for a search of all messages in his inbox (was 4.5s, now
213 1.8s). Thanks, Austin!
215 Faster initial indexing
217 More efficient indexing of new messages results in a measured
218 speedup of 1.4x for the initial indexing of 3 GB of mail (1h 14m
219 rather than 1h 46m). Thanks to Austin Clements and Michal Sojka.
221 Make "notmuch new" faster for unchanged directories
223 Optimizing to not do any further examinations of sub-directories
224 when the filesystem indicates that a directory is unchanged from the
225 last "notmuch new" results in measured speedups of 8.5 for the "No
226 new mail" case, (was 0.77s, now 0.09s). Thanks to Karel Zak.
228 New emacs-interface features
229 ----------------------------
231 Support for PGP/MIME (GnuPG)
233 Automatically indicate validity of signatures for multipart/signed
234 messages. Automatically display decrypted content for
235 multipart/encrypted messages. See the emacs variable
236 notmuch-crypto-process-mime for more information. Note that this
237 needs gpg-agent and a pinentry tool just as the command line tools.
238 Also note there is no support SMIME yet.
240 Output of pipe command is now displayed if pipe command fails
242 This is extremely useful in the common use case of piping a patch to
243 "git am". If git fails to cleanly merge the patch the error messages
244 from the failed merge are now clearly displayed to the user, (where
245 previously they were silently hidden from the user).
247 User-selectable From address
249 A user can choose which configured email addresses should be used as
250 the From address whenever composing a new message. To do so, simply
251 press C-u before the command which will open a new message. Emacs
252 will prompt for the from address to use.
254 The user can customize the "Notmuch Identities" setting in the
255 notmuch customize group in order to use addresses other than those in
256 the notmuch configuration file if desired.
258 The user can also choose to always be prompted for the from address
259 when composing a new message (without having to use C-u) by setting
260 the "Notmuch Always Prompt For Sender" option in the notmuch
263 Hiding of repeated subjects in collapsed thread view
265 In notmuch-show mode, if a collapsed message has the same subject as
266 its parent, the subject is not shown.
268 Automatic detection and hiding of original message in top-posted message
270 When a message contains a line looking something like:
272 ----- Original Message -----
274 emacs hides this and all subsequent lines as an "original message",
275 (allowing the user to click or press enter on the "original message"
276 button to display it again). This makes the handling of top-posted
277 citations work much like conventional citations.
279 New hooks for running code when tags are modified
281 Some users want to perform additional actions whenever a particular
282 tag is added/removed from a message. This could be used to, for
283 example, interface with some external spam-recognition training
284 tool. To facilitate this, two new hooks are added which can be
285 modified in the following settings of the notmuch customize group:
287 Notmuch Before Tag Hook
288 Notmuch After Tag Hook
290 New optional support for hiding some multipart/alternative parts
292 Many emails are sent with redundant content within a
293 multipart/alternative group (such as a text/plain part as well as a
294 text/html part). Users can configure the setting:
296 Notmuch Show All Multipart/Alternative Parts
298 to "off" in the notmuch customize group to have the interface
299 automatically hide some part alternatives (such as text/html
300 parts). This new part hiding is not configured by default yet
301 because there's not yet a simple way to re-display such a hidden
302 part if it is not actually redundant with a displayed part.
304 Better rendering of text/x-vcalendar parts
306 These parts are now displayed in a format suitable for use with the
309 Avoid getting confused by Subject and Author fields with newline characters
311 Replacing all characters with ASCII code less than 32 with a question mark.
313 Cleaner display of From line in email messages (remove double quotes,
314 and drop "name" if it's actually just a repeat of the email address).
316 Vim interface improvements
317 --------------------------
318 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface:
320 * Using sendmail directly rather than mailx,
321 * Implementing archive in show view
322 * Add support to mark as read in show and search views
323 * Add delete commands
326 Bindings improvements
327 ---------------------
328 Ruby bindings are now much more complete
330 Including QUERY.sort, QUERY.to_s, MESSAGE.maildir_flags_to_tags,
331 MESSAGE.tags_to_maildir_flags, and MESSAGE.get_filenames
333 * Python bindings have been upodated and extended
334 (docs online at http://packages.python.org/notmuch/)
337 - Message().get_filenames(),
338 - Message().tags_to_maildir_flags(),Message().maildir_flags_to_tags()
339 - list(Threads()) and list(Messages) works now
341 - Message().__cmp__() and __hash__()
342 These allow, for example:
345 As well as set arithmetic on Messages():
347 s1, s2= set(msgs1), set(msgs2)
352 - len(Messages()) as it exausted the iterator.
353 Use len(list(Messages())) or
354 Query.count_messages() to get the length.
356 Added initial Go bindings in bindings/go
358 New build-system features
359 -------------------------
360 Added support for building in a directory other than the source directory
362 This can be used with the widely-supported idiom of simply running
363 the configure script from some other directory:
370 Fix to save configure options for future, implicit runs of configure
372 When a user updates the source (such as with "git pull") calling
373 "make" may cause an automatic re-run of the configure script. When
374 this happens, the configure script will automatically be called with
375 the same options the user originally passed in the most-recent
376 manual invocation of configure.
378 New test-suite feature
379 ----------------------
380 Binary for bash for running test suite now located via PATH.
382 The notmuch test suite requires a fairly recent version of bash (>=
383 bash 4). As some systems supply an older version of bash at
384 /bin/bash, the test suite is now updated to search $PATH to locate
385 the bash binary. This allows users of systems with old /bin/bash to
386 simply install bash >= 4 somewhere on $PATH before /bin and then use
389 Support for testing output with a trailing newline.
391 Previously, some tests would fail to notice a difference in the
392 presence/absence of a trailing newline in a program output, (which
393 has led to bugs in the past). Now, carefully-written tests (using
394 test_expect_equal_file rather than test_expect_equal) will detect
395 any change in the presence/absence of a trailing newline. Many tests
396 are updated to take advantage of this.
398 Avoiding accessing user's $HOME while running test suite
400 The test suite now carefully creates its own HOME directory. This
401 allows the test suite to be run with no existing HOME directory, (as
402 some build systems apparently do), and avoids test-suite differences
403 due to configuration files in the users HOME directory.
408 Output *all* files for "notmuch search --output=files"
410 For the cases where multiple files have the same Message ID,
411 previous versions of notmuch would output only one such file. This
412 command is now fixed to correctly output all files.
414 Fixed spurious search results from "overlapped" indexing of addresses
416 This fixed a bug where a search for:
418 to:user@elsewhere.com
420 would incorrectly match a message sent:
422 To: user@example,com, someone@elsewhere.com
424 Fix --output=json when search has no results
426 A bug present since notmuch 0.4 had caused searches with no results
427 to produce an invalid json object. This is now fixed to cleanly
428 return a valid json object representing an empty array "[]" as
431 fix the automatic detection of the From address for "notmuch reply"
432 from the Received headers in some cases.
434 Fix core dump on DragonFlyBSD due to -1 return value from
435 sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX).
437 Cleaned up several memory leaks
439 Eliminated a few, rare segmentation faults and a double-free.
441 Fix libnotmuch library to only export notmuch API functions
443 Previous release of the notmuch library also exported some Xapian
444 C++ exception type symbols. These were never part of the library
445 interface and were never intended to be exported.
447 Emacs-interface bug fixes
448 -------------------------
449 Display any unexpected output or errors from "notmuch search" invocations
451 Previously any misformatted output or trailing error messages were
452 silently ignored. This output is now clearly displayed. This fix was
453 very helpful in identifying and fixing the bug described below.
455 Fix bug where some threads would be missing from large search results
457 When a search returned a "large" number of results, the emacs
458 interface was incorrectly dropping one thread every time the output
459 of the "notmuch search" process spanned the emacs read-buffer. This
462 Avoid re-compression of .gz files (and similar) when saving attachment
464 Emacs was being too clever for its own good and trying to
465 re-compress pre-compressed .gz files when saving such attachments
466 (potentially corrupting the attachment). The emacs interface is
467 fixed to avoid this bug.
469 Fix hiding of a message when a previously-hidden citation is visible
471 Previously the citation would remain visible in this case. This is
472 fixed so that hiding a message hides all parts.
474 Notmuch 0.5 (2010-11-11)
475 ========================
476 New, general features
477 ---------------------
478 Maildir-flag synchronization
480 Notmuch now knows how to synchronize flags in maildir filenames with
481 tags in the notmuch database. The following flag/tag mappings are
490 'S' unread (added when 'S' flag is not present)
492 The synchronization occurs in both directions, (for example, adding
493 the 'S' flag to a file will cause the "unread" tag to be added, and
494 adding the "replied" tag to a message will cause the file to be
495 renamed with an 'R' flag).
497 This synchronization is enabled by default for users of the
498 command-line interface, (though only files in directories named
499 "cur" or "new" will be renamed). It can be disabled by setting the
500 new maildir.synchronize_flags option in the configuration file. For
503 notmuch config set maildir.synchronize_flags false
505 Users upgrading may also want to run "notmuch setup" once (just
506 accept the existing configuration) to get a new, nicely-commented
507 [maildir] section added to the configuration file.
509 For users of the notmuch library, the new synchronization
510 functionality is available with the following two new functions:
512 notmuch_message_maildir_flags_to_tags
513 notmuch_message_tags_to_maildir_flags
515 It is anticipated that future improvements to this support will
516 allow for safe synchronization of the 'T' flag with the "deleted"
517 tag, as well as support for custom flag/tag mappings.
521 Support for querying multiple filenames for a single message
523 It is common for the mailstore to contain multiple files with the
524 same message ID. Previously, notmuch would always hide these
525 duplicate files, (returning a single, arbitrary filename with
526 notmuch_message_get_filename).
528 With this release, library users can access all filenames for a
529 message with the new function:
531 notmuch_message_get_filenames
533 Together with notmuch_filenames_valid, notmuch_filenames_get, and
534 notmuch_filenames_move_to_next it is now possible to iterate over
535 all available filenames for a given message.
537 New command-line features
538 -------------------------
539 New "notmuch show --format=raw" for getting at original email contents
541 This new feature allows for a fully-functional email client to be
542 built on top of the notmuch command-line without needing any direct
543 access to the mail store itself.
545 For example, it's now possible to run "emacs -f notmuch" on a local
546 machine with only ssh access to the mail store/notmuch database. To
547 do this, simply set the notmuch-command variable in emacs to the
548 name of a script containing:
550 ssh user@host notmuch "$@"
552 If the ssh client has enabled connection sharing (ControlMaster
553 option in OpenSSH), the emacs interface can be quite responsive this
558 Fix "notmuch search" to print nothing when nothing matches
560 The 0.4 release had a bug in which:
562 notmuch search <expression-with-no-matches>
564 would produce a single blank line of output, (where previous
565 versions would produce no output. This fix also causes a change in
566 the --format=json output, (which would previously produce "[]" and
567 now produces nothing).
569 Emacs interface improvements
570 ----------------------------
571 Fix to allow pipe ('|') command to work when using notmuch over ssh
573 Fix count of lines in hidden signatures.
575 Omit repeated subject lines in (collapsed) thread display.
577 Display current thread subject in a header line.
579 Provide a "c i" binding to copy a thread ID from the search view.
581 Allow for notmuch-fcc-dirs to have a value of nil.
583 Also, the more complex form of notmuch-fcc-dirs now has a slightly
584 different format. It no longer has a special first-element, fallback
585 string. Instead it's now a list of cons cells where the car of each
586 cell is a regular expression to be matched against the sender
587 address, and the cdr is the name of a folder to use for an FCC. So
588 the old fallback behavior can be achieved by including a final cell
589 of (".*" . "default-fcc-folder").
591 Vim interface improvements
592 --------------------------
593 Felipe Contreras provided a number of updates for the vim interface.
595 These include optimizations, support for newer versions of vim, fixed
596 support for sending mail on modern systems, new commands, and
601 Added initial ruby bindings in bindings/ruby
603 Notmuch 0.4 (2010-11-01)
604 ========================
605 New command-line features
606 -------------------------
607 notmuch search --output=(summary|threads|messages|tags|files)
609 This new option allows for particular items to be returned from
610 notmuch searches. The "summary" option is the default and behaves
611 just as "notmuch search" has historically behaved.
613 The new option values allow for thread IDs, message IDs, lists of
614 tags, and lists of filenames to be returned from searches. It is
615 expected that this new option will be very useful in shell
616 scripts. For example:
618 for file in $(notmuch search --output=files <search-terms>); do
619 <operations-on> "$file"
622 notmuch show --format=mbox <search-specification>
624 This new option allows for the messages matching a search
625 specification to be presented as an mbox. Specifically the "mboxrd"
626 format is used which allows for reversible quoting of lines
627 beginning with "From ". A reader should remove a single '>' from the
628 beginning of all lines beginning with one or more '>' characters
629 followed by the 5 characters "From ".
631 notmuch config [get|set] <section>.<item> [value ...]
633 The new top-level "config" command allows for any value in the
634 notmuch configuration file to be queried or set to a new value. Both
635 single-valued and multi-valued items are supported, as our any
636 custom items stored in the configuration file.
638 Avoid setting Bcc header in "notmuch reply"
640 We decided that this was a bit heavy-handed as the actual mail
641 user-agent should be responsible for setting any Bcc option. Also,
642 see below for the notmuch/emacs user-agent now setting an Fcc by
643 default rather than Bcc.
647 Add notmuch_query_get_query_string and notmuch_query_get_sort
649 These are simply functions for querying properties of a
650 notmuch_query_t object.
654 Enable Fcc of all sent messages by default (to "sent" directory)
656 All messages sent from the emacs interface will now be saved to the
657 notmuch mail store where they will be incorporated to the database
658 by the next "notmuch new". By default, messages are saved to the
659 "sent" directory at the top-level of the mail store. This directory
660 can be customized by means of the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" option in the
661 notmuch customize interface.
663 Ability to all open messages in a thread to a pipe
665 Historically, the '|' keybinding allows for piping a single message
666 to an external command. Now, by prefixing this key with a prefix
667 argument, (for example, by pressing "Control-U |"), all open
668 messages in the current thread will be sent to the external command.
670 Optional support for detecting inline patches
672 This hook is disabled by default but can be enabled with a checkbox
673 under "Notmuch Show Insert Text/Plain Hook" in the notmuch customize
674 interface. It allows for inline patches to be detected and treated
675 as if they were attachments, (with context-sensitive highlighting).
677 Automatically tag messages as "replied" when sending a reply
679 Messages replied to within the emacs interface will now be tagged as
680 "replied". This feature can easily be customized to add or remove
681 other tags as well. For example, a user might use a tag of
682 "needs-reply" and can configure this feature to automatically remove
683 that tag when replying. See "Notmuch Message Mark Replied" in the
684 notmuch customize interface.
686 Allow search-result color specifications to overlay each other
688 For example, one tag can specify the background color of matching
689 lines, while another can specify the foreground. With this change,
690 both settings will now be visible simultaneously, (which was not the
691 case in previous releases). See "Notmuch Search Line Faces" in the
692 notmuch customize interface.
694 Make hidden author names still available for incremental search.
696 When there is insufficient space to display all authors of a thread
697 in search results, the names of hidden authors are now still made
698 available to emacs' incremental search commands. As the user
699 searches, matching lines will temporarily expand to show the hidden
702 New binding of Control-TAB (works like TAB in reverse)
704 Many notmuch nodes already use TAB to navigate forward through
705 various items allowing actions, (message headers, email attachments,
706 etc.). The new Control-TAB binding operates similarly but in the
709 New build-system features
710 -------------------------
711 Various portability fixes have been applied
713 These include fixes for build failures on at least Solaris, FreeBSD,
714 and Fedora systems. We're hopeful that the notmuch code base is now
715 more portable than ever before.
717 Arrange for libnotmuch to be found automatically after make install
719 The notmuch build system is now careful to help the user avoid
720 errors of the form "libnotmuch.so could not be found" immediately
721 after installing. This support takes two forms:
723 1. If the library is installed to a system directory,
724 (configured in /etc/ld.so.conf), then "make install" will
725 automatically run ldconfig.
727 2. If the library is installed to a non-system directory, the
728 build system adds a DR_RUNPATH entry to the final binary
729 pointing to the directory to which the library is installed.
731 When this support works, the user should be able to run notmuch
732 immediately after "make install", without any errors trying to find
733 the notmuch library, and without having to manually set environment
734 variables such as LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
736 Check compiler/linker options before using them
738 The configure script now carefully checks that any desired
739 compilation options, (whether for enabling compiler warnings, or for
740 embedding rpath, etc.), are supported. Only supported options are
741 used in the resulting Makefile.
743 New test-suite features
744 -----------------------
745 New modularization of test suite.
747 Thanks to a gracious relicensing of the test-suite infrastructure
748 from the git project, notmuch now has a modular test suite. This
749 provides the ability to run individual sections of the test suite
750 rather than the whole things. It also provides better summary of
751 test results, with support for tests that are expected to fail
752 (BROKEN and FIXED) in addition to PASS and FAIL. Finally, it makes
753 it easy to run the test suite within valgrind (pass --valgrind to
754 notmuch-test or to any sub-script) which has been very useful.
756 New testing of emacs interface.
758 The test suite has been augmented to allow automated testing of the
759 emacs interfaces. So far, this includes basic searches, display of
760 threads, and tag manipulation. This also includes a test that a new
761 message can successfully be sent out through a (dummy) SMTP server
762 and that said message is successfully integrated into the notmuch
763 database via the FCC setting.
767 Fix potential corruption of database when "notmuch new " is interrupted.
769 Previously, an interruption of "notmuch new" would (rarely) result
770 in a corrupt database. The corruption would manifest itself by a
771 persistent error of the form:
773 document ID of 1234 has no thread ID
775 The message-adding code has been carefully audited and reworked to
776 avoid this sort of corruption regardless of when it is interrupted.
778 Fix failure with extremely long message ID headers.
780 Previously, a message with an extremely long message ID, (say, more
781 than 300 characters), would fail to be added to notmuch, (triggering
782 Xapian exceptions). This has now been fixed.
784 Fix for messages with "charset=unknown-8bit"
786 Previously, messages with this charset would cause notmuch to emit a
787 GMime warning, (which would then trip up emacs or other interfaces
788 parsing the notmuch results).
790 Fix notmuch_query_search_threads function to return NULL on any exception
792 Fix "notmuch search" to return non-zero if notmuch_query_search_threads fails
794 Previously, this command could confusingly report a Xapian
795 exception, yet still return an error code of 0. It now correctly
796 returns a failing error code of 1 in this case.
800 Fix to handle a message with a subject containing, for example "[1234]"
802 Previously, a message subject containing a sequence of digits within
803 square brackets would cause the emacs interface to mis-parse the
804 output of "notmuch search". This would result in the message being
805 mis-displayed and prevent the user from manipulating the message in
808 Fix to correctly handle message IDs containing ".."
810 The emacs interface now properly quotes message IDs to avoid a
811 Xapian bug in which the ".." within a message ID would be
812 misinterpreted as a numeric range specification.
816 The python bindings for notmuch have been updated to work with python3.
818 Debian-specific fixes
819 ---------------------
820 Fix emacs initialization so "M-x notmuch" works for users by default.
822 Now, a new Debian user can immediately run "emacs -f notmuch" after
823 "apt-get install notmuch". Previously, the user would have had to
824 edit the ~/.emacs file to add "(require 'notmuch)" before this would
827 Notmuch 0.3.1 (2010-04-27)
828 ==========================
831 Fix an infinite loop in "notmuch reply"
833 This bug could be triggered by replying to a message where the
834 user's primary email address did not appear in the To: header and
835 the user had not configured any secondary email addresses. The bug
836 was a simple re-use of the same iterator variable in nested loops.
838 Fix a potential SEGV in "notmuch search"
840 This bug could be triggered by an author name ending in a ','.
841 Admittedly - that's almost certainly a spam email, but we never
842 want notmuch to crash.
846 Fix calculations for line wrapping in the primary "notmuch" view.
848 Fix Fcc support to prompt to create a directory if the specified Fcc
849 directory does not exist.
853 Fix build on OpenSolaris (at least) due to missing 'extern "C"' block.
855 Without this, the C++ sources could not find strcasestr and the
856 final linking of notmuch would fail.
858 Notmuch 0.3 (2010-04-27)
859 ========================
860 New command-line features
861 -------------------------
862 User-configurable tags for new messages
864 A new "new.tags" option is available in the configuration file to
865 determine which tags are applied to new messages. Run "notmuch
866 setup" to generate new documentation within ~/.notmuch-config on how
867 to specify this value.
869 Threads search results named based on subjects that match search
871 This means that when new mails arrived to a thread you've previously
872 read, and the new mails have a new subject, you will see that
873 subject in the search results rather than the old subject.
875 Faster operation of "notmuch tag" (avoid unneeded sorting)
877 Since the user just wants to tag all matching messages, we can make
878 things perform a bit faster by avoiding the sort.
880 Even Better guessing of From: header for "notmuch reply"
882 Notmuch now looks at a number of headers when trying to figure out
883 the best From: header to use in a reply. This is helpful if you have
884 several configured email addresses, and you also subscribe to various
885 mailing lists with different addresses, (so that mails you are
886 replying to won't always include your subscribed address in the To:
889 Indication of author names that match a search
891 When notmuch displays threads as the result of a search, it now
892 lists the authors that match the search before listing the other
893 authors in the thread. It inserts a pipe '|' symbol between the last
894 matching and first non-matching author. This is especially useful in
895 a search that includes tag:unread. Now the authors of the unread
896 messages in the thread are listed first.
900 Sebastian Spaeth has contributed his python bindings for the notmuch
901 library to the central repository. These bindings were previously
902 known as "cnotmuch" within python but have now been renamed to be
903 accessible with a simple, and more official-looking "import notmuch".
905 The bindings have already proven very useful as people proficient in
906 python have been able to easily develop programs to do notmuch-based
907 searches for email-address completion, maildir-flag synchronization,
910 These bindings are available within the bindings/python directory, but
911 are not yet integrated into the top-level Makefiles, nor the top-level
912 package-building scripts. Improvements are welcome.
914 Emacs interface improvements
915 ----------------------------
916 An entirely new initial view for notmuch, (friendly yet powerful)
918 Some of us call the new view "notmuch hello" but you can get at it
919 by simply calling "emacs -f notmuch". The new view provides a search
920 bar where new searches can be performed. It also displays a list of
921 recent searches, along with a button to save any of these, giving it
922 a new name as a "saved search". Many people find these "saved
923 searches" one of the most convenient ways of organizing their mail,
924 (providing all of the features of "folders" in other mail clients,
925 but without any of the disadvantages).
927 Finally, this view can also optionally display all of the tags that
928 exist in the database, along with a count for each tag, and a custom
929 search of messages with that tag that's simply a click (or keypress)
932 Note: For users that liked the original mode of "emacs -f notmuch"
933 immediately displaying a particular search result, we
934 recommend instead running something like:
936 emacs --eval '(notmuch search "tag:inbox" t)'
938 The "t" means to sort the messages in an "oldest first" order,
939 (as notmuch would do previously by default). You can also
940 leave that off to have your search results in "newest first"
943 Full-featured "customize" support for configuring notmuch
945 Notmuch now plugs in well to the emacs "customize" mode to make it
946 much simpler to find things about the notmuch interface that can be
949 You can get to this mode by starting at the main "Customize" menu in
950 emacs, then browsing through "Applications", "Mail", and
951 "Notmuch". Or you can go straight to "M-x customize-group"
954 Once you're at the customize screen, you'll see a list of documented
955 options that can be manipulated along with checkboxes, drop-down
956 selectors, and text-entry boxes for configuring the various
959 Support for doing tab-completion of email addresses
961 This support currently relies on an external program,
962 (notmuch-addresses), that is not yet shipped with notmuch
963 itself. But multiple, suitable implementations of this program have
964 already been written that generate address completions by doing
965 notmuch searches of your email collection. For example, providing
966 first those addresses that you have composed messages to in the
969 One such program (implemented in python with the python bindings to
970 notmuch) is available via:
972 git clone http://jkr.acm.jhu.edu/git/notmuch_addresses.git
974 Install that program as notmuch-addresses on your PATH, and then
975 hitting TAB on a partial email address or name within the To: or Cc:
976 line of an email message will provide matching completions.
978 Support for file-based (Fcc) delivery of sent messages to mail store
980 This isn't yet enabled by default. To enable this, one will have to
981 set the "Notmuch Fcc Dirs" setting within the notmuch customize
982 screen, (see its documentation there for details). We anticipate
983 making this automatic in a future release.
985 New 'G' key binding to trigger mail refresh (G == "Get new mail")
987 The 'G' key works wherever '=' works. Before refreshing the screen
988 it calls an external program that can be used to poll email servers,
989 run notmuch new and setup specific tags for the new emails. The
990 script to be called should be configured with the "Notmuch Poll
991 Script" setting in the customize interface. This script will
992 typically invoke "notmuch new" and then perhaps several "notmuch
995 Implement emacs message display with the JSON output from notmuch.
997 This is much more robust than the previous implementation, (where
998 some HTML mails and mail quoting the notmuch code with the delimiter
999 characters in it would cause the parser to fall over).
1001 Better handling of HTML messages and MIME attachments (inline images!)
1003 Allow for any MIME parts that emacs can display to be displayed
1004 inline. This includes inline viewing of image attachments, (provided
1005 the window is large enough to fit the image at its natural size).
1007 Much more robust handling of HTML messages. Currently both text/plain
1008 and text/html alternates will be rendered next to each other. In a
1009 future release, users will be able to decide to see only one or the
1010 other representation.
1012 Each attachment now has its own button so that attachments can be
1013 saved individually (the 'w' key is still available to save all
1016 Customizable support for tidying of text/plain message content
1018 Many new functions are available for tidying up message
1019 content. These include options such as wrapping long lines,
1020 compressing duplicate blank lines, etc.
1022 Most of these are disabled by default, but can easily be enabled by
1023 clicking the available check boxes under the "Notmuch Show Insert
1024 Text/Plain Hook" within the notmuch customize screen.
1026 New support for searchable citations (even when hidden)
1028 When portions of overly-long citations are hidden, the contents of
1029 these citations will still be available for emacs' standard
1030 "incremental search" functions. When the search matches any portion
1031 of a hidden citation, the citation will become visible temporarily
1032 to display the search result.
1034 More flexible handling of header visibility
1036 As an answer to complaints from many users, the To, Cc, and Date
1037 headers of messages are no longer hidden by default. For those users
1038 that liked that these were hidden, a new "Notmuch Messages Headers
1039 Visible" option in the customize interface can be set to nil. The
1040 visibility of headers can still be toggled on a per-message basis
1041 with the 'h' keybinding.
1043 For users that don't want to see some subset of those headers, the
1044 new "Notmuch Message Headers" variable can be customized to list
1045 only those headers that should be present in the display of a message.
1047 The Return key now toggles message visibility anywhere
1049 Previously this worked only on the first summary-line of a message.
1051 Customizable formatting of search results
1053 The user can easily customize the order, width, and formatting of
1054 the various fields in a "notmuch search" buffer. See the "Notmuch
1055 Search Result Format" section of the customize interface.
1057 Generate nicer names for search buffers when using a saved search.
1059 Add a notmuch User-Agent header when sending mail from notmuch/emacs.
1061 New keybinding (M-Ret) to open all collapsed messages in a thread.
1065 Provide a new NOTMUCH_SORT_UNSORTED value for queries
1067 This can be somewhat faster when sorting simply isn't desired. For
1068 example when collecting a set of messages that will all be
1069 manipulated identically, (adding a tag, removing a tag, deleting the
1070 messages), then there's no advantage to sorting the messages by
1075 Fix to compile against GMime 2.6
1077 Previously notmuch insisted on being able to find GMime 2.4, (even
1078 though GMime 2.6 would have worked all along).
1080 Fix configure script to accept (and ignore) various standard options.
1082 For example, those that the Gentoo build scripts expect configure to
1083 accept are now all accepted.
1087 A large number of new tests for the many new features.
1089 Better display of output from failed tests.
1091 Now shows failures with diff rather than forcing the user to gaze at
1092 complete actual and expected output looking for deviation.
1094 Notmuch 0.2 (2010-04-16)
1095 ========================
1096 This is the second release of the notmuch mail system, with actual
1097 detailed release notes this time!
1099 This release consists of a number of minor new features that make
1100 notmuch more pleasant to use, and a few fairly major bug fixes.
1102 We didn't quite hit our release target of "about a week" from the 0.1
1103 release, (0.2 is happening 11 days after 0.1), but we hope to do
1104 better for next week. Look forward to some major features coming to
1105 notmuch in subsequent releases.
1111 Better guessing of From: header.
1113 Notmuch now tries harder to guess which configured address should be
1114 used as the From: line in a "notmuch reply". It will examine the
1115 Received: headers if it fails to find any configured address in To:
1116 or Cc:. This allows it to often choose the correct address even when
1117 replying to a message sent to a mailing list, and not directly to a
1120 Make "notmuch count" with no arguments count all messages
1122 Previously, it was hard to construct a search term that was
1123 guaranteed to match all messages.
1125 Provide a new special-case search term of "*" to match all messages.
1127 This can be used in any command accepting a search term, such as
1128 "notmuch search '*'". Note that you'll want to take care that the
1129 shell doesn't expand * against the current files. And note that the
1130 support for "*" is a special case. It's only meaningful as a single
1131 search term and loses its special meaning when combined with any
1134 Automatically detect thread connections even when a parent message is
1137 Previously, if two or more message were received with a common
1138 parent, but that parent was not received, then these messages would
1139 not be recognized as belonging to the same thread. This is now fixed
1140 so that such messages are properly connected in a thread.
1144 Fix potential data loss in "notmuch new" with SIGINT
1146 One code path in "notmuch new" was not properly handling
1147 SIGINT. Previously, this could lead to messages being removed from
1148 the database (and their tags being lost) if the user pressed
1149 Control-C while "notmuch new" was working.
1151 Fix segfault when a message includes a MIME part that is empty.
1153 Fix handling of non-ASCII characters with --format=json
1155 Previously, characters outside the range of 7-bit ASCII were
1156 silently dropped from the JSON output. This led to corrupted display
1157 of utf-8 content in the upcoming notmuch web-based frontends.
1159 Fix headers to be properly decoded in "notmuch reply"
1161 Previously, the user might see:
1163 Subject: Re: =?iso-8859-2?q?Rozlu=E8ka?=
1167 Subject: Re: Rozlučka
1169 The former text is properly encoded to be RFC-compliant SMTP, will
1170 be sent correctly, and will be properly decoded by the
1171 recipient. But the user trying to edit the reply would likely be
1172 unable to read or edit that field in its encoded form.
1174 Emacs client features
1175 ---------------------
1176 Show the last few lines of citations as well as the first few lines.
1178 It's often the case that the last sentence of a citation is what is
1179 being replied to directly, so the last few lines are often much more
1180 important. The number of lines shown at the beginning and end of any
1181 citation can be configured, (notmuch-show-citation-lines-prefix and
1182 notmuch-show-citation-lines-suffix).
1184 The '+' and '-' commands in the search view can now add and remove
1187 Selective bulk tagging is now possible by selecting a region of
1188 threads and then using either the '+' or '-' keybindings. Bulk
1189 tagging is still available for all threads matching the current
1190 search with the '*' binding.
1192 More meaningful buffer names for thread-view buffers.
1194 Notmuch now uses the Subject of the thread as the buffer
1195 name. Previously it was using the thread ID, which is a meaningless
1198 Provide for customized colors of threads in search view based on tags.
1200 See the documentation of notmuch-search-line-faces, (or us "M-x
1201 customize" and browse to the "notmuch" group within "Applications"
1202 and "Mail"), for details on how to configure this colorization.
1204 Build-system features
1205 ---------------------
1206 Add support to properly build libnotmuch on Darwin systems (OS X).
1208 Add support to configure for many standard options.
1210 We include actual support for:
1212 --includedir --mandir --sysconfdir
1214 And accept and silently ignore several more:
1216 --build --infodir --libexecdir --localstatedir
1217 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
1219 Install emacs client in "make install" rather than requiring a
1220 separate "make install-emacs".
1222 Automatically compute versions numbers between releases.
1224 This support uses the git-describe notation, so a version such as
1225 0.1-144-g43cbbfc indicates a version that is 144 commits since the
1226 0.1 release and is available as git commit "43cbbfc".
1228 Add a new "make test" target to run the test suite and actually verify
1231 Notmuch 0.1 (2010-04-05)
1232 ========================
1233 This is the first release of the notmuch mail system.
1235 It includes the libnotmuch library, the notmuch command-line
1236 interface, and an emacs-based interface to notmuch.
1238 Note: Notmuch will work best with Xapian 1.0.18 (or later) or Xapian
1239 1.1.4 (or later). Previous versions of Xapian (whether 1.0 or 1.1) had
1240 a performance bug that made notmuch very slow when modifying
1241 tags. This would cause distracting pauses when reading mail while
1242 notmuch would wait for Xapian when removing the "inbox" and "unread"
1243 tags from messages in a thread.